MBP steps up surveillance after cases surge in capital

THE Milne Bay administration will increase surveillance at entry points into the province following the surge in the number of the Covid-19 cases in the National Capital District (NCD), an official says.
Provincial administrator Ashan Numa told The National that the Covid-19 task force would meet this week to strengthen the entry points.
“We’ve established the Covid-19 task force in the province using our existing structures,” he said.
“We have used our disaster and emergency committee to drive the efforts to address the Covid-19.
“When the lockdown was imposed we coordinated with all our key stakeholders, chamber of commerce, provincial health authority, law and justice sector, civil society and the districts.”
Numa, who is also chairman of the provincial disaster committee, said over the last four
months that they had identified a lack of cohesion from the provincial and national Government through the national operations centre.
“There was bit of a miscommunication,” he said.
“From the provincial level, coordination was supposed to be through the Department of Provincial and Local Level Government Affairs which used to chair the national disaster management committee.
“That was missing so we really struggled to get information and directives to our provincial level to the districts.
“Since then, we’ve now adopted the provincial strategy which we have been implementing.”
Numa said they had already established the entry points, through the airports and shipping ports.
He said those are monitored and surveillance is carried out daily. Everyone who travels through Gurney airport gets health checks by the teams at the airport.
“We have three airports, Gurney, Kiriwina and Misima.
“We’ve maintained restrictions so and the airlines have cooperated with us.
“All flights arrive at Gurney Airport and undergo checks before flying onto Misima and Kiriwina.
“Now come the issues in the NCD, we are going to be meeting on Friday to relook at the strategy.
“We will be looking at that as the increased numbers in the NCD is going to pose a risk on us.”